First, AI chatbots disrupted how people use search. Now, AI companies are building browsers. For publishers, it’s starting to feel like a full-on invasion.
The industry is at a turning point. With Google and Chrome, there was at least a shared business model—Google made money through advertising, and publishers could share in that revenue. There was friction, but there was alignment.
With AI, that’s no longer the case.
So far, AI platforms have shown little interest in supporting ad infrastructure. Instead, they’ve scraped publisher content to train models, and reduced the need for users to visit publisher websites. The result? Shrinking traffic, fewer monetization opportunities, and very few guardrails.
The early signs aren’t encouraging. And if you look at what’s happened in the past when tech companies moved into traditional industries, the outlook isn’t great.
- Google’s ad business eventually out-earned the publishers it was supposed to help.
- Amazon’s ecommerce operation overtook many traditional retailers.
- Netflix outpaced the very programmers and networks it once licensed content from.
The same pattern could repeat here. AI companies are building browsers, rewriting the content discovery model, and deciding what users see and how they see it. That’s not a small shift. It’s a direct threat to the publisher’s role in the ecosystem.
The question now is: Will publishers lean in, or push back?
That could mean negotiating better terms for content use, demanding ad-friendly environments, or investing in their own distribution strategies. Waiting to see how it plays out hasn’t worked in the past—and there’s no reason to think it will now.
AI may be the devil we don’t know. But if publishers don’t act fast, they risk becoming the next industry that tech simply replaces.
Sam Khoury
Founder, Cedar Consultants
Creative consulting solutions for Adtech